Hello Alex,
You're looking well today... Alex, Do you
remember the year 2000? When computers began to mis-behave?
After reading this post and I saw the author was Alex, it all made sense. hahaha... One thing for sure Alex, you sure can write!
Get Abbyis not bad, but I'm still going to keep my
HAL9000

Too funny!
Joe

WOW it's 2012 and dot coms are stronger than ever.  Dealers are quaking in the shoes over Zag, Truecar, Edmunds, etc.  

Nice post, Jeff. Reading this article today made me laugh.

The factories might continue to shrink the new vehicles sales field, but they're losing ground in the used sector. With a few bulk feeds, smaller sites can be just as visible to consumers because of sites like Oodle.

Money will be thrown at projects like myride.com, but generating leads comes down to having an inventory of cars for sale and exposure to the market, which is something that anyone can do without a million dollars.

Selling vehicles online is a funnel process. You advertise the vehicle online, the customer searches for their vehicle, your listing is appealing, they click on it, they email your dealership and include a phone number for you to contact them. Once an email lead turns into a phone lead it then hopefully converts to an appointment, the customer then physically sees, smells, drives the vehicle they are interested in and hopefully purchase the vehicle. This will go on this way for sometime to come. If I had a dime for every prognosticator of wisdom that stated "Cars will be sold directly online thru email with little or no sales person involvement" several years back, I'd be a millionaire. Customers buy from people they like, that they've had repoire built over the phone and then in person, from an actual sales person. If I was asked what would be the biggest probable "Sales Prevention Tool" that could ever be implemented by a dealership, it would have to be adding a robotic voiced voice mail tree type of customer response system from internet generated advertising on vehicles. I can envision seeing Call Bright reports with call durations of 8 seconds. C'mon guys, people buy from people they like and they need to see & feel the car before making the commitment. It's the sizzle not the steak. Systems like this are purely steak.

I miss Pete Perrota. I think he left automotive. I knew him from the Auto Retailing On the Web (AROW) conferences that he ran. I even spoke at one... Heck, the year was 2000 and I was on the speaking circuit as a CRM "expert." 937-643-1189 if you find and read this Pete.

www.ai-dealer.com/CAW%20CRM%20Oct%202000%20Article.pdf

I found that artile several months ago and left some comments after it on the original post... even tried to hunt down Pete and Sheldon Sandler afterwards to see what they thought of brick and mortar car dealers adopting shopping cart based ecommerce as Web 2.0 on the Internet or "click and mortar" as has happened in every other industry.

Shopping cart based ecommerce is here. Not just Ai-Dealer. Lithia has a custom solution built for their new used car superstore (www.L2.com - sorry folks, it apparently only runs if you have an ADP DMS), AutoNation will apparently be out with one soon too, my last company NeoSynergy has one www.neosynergy.net/products_buydirect.html, and others even automate dealership price responses as auto responders (in exchange for your email address of course - My Live Offer, Rednumbat).

Shopping cart based ecommerce is coming to automotive. You can either get one or learn to compete with one... hopefully when that happens dealers will finally start to learn how to make their websites somewhere worth going for consumers. I wrote about it last week in my management briefing series. If you would like some free ideas of what I had in mind, you can read it here.


If you would like me to add you to my newsletter list, just send me an email to bhoecht (at) ai-dealer.com

Great post Jeff... Seven years old and still very bang on.

This is a great article and looking back allows us at times a clearer image of where we are going.

Many manufacturers selling products through retailers and dealers were slow to embrace the Internet as a sales & marketing tool for fear of alienating channel partners. The idea of B2B trade exchanges as the means to lowest price using online auctions and sales proved to be by almost any measure a failure except via ebay and some of the larger independents. It maybe due to their huge success that there are not more competitors in this market.

Many manufacturers are still trying to figure out how to get closer to consumers online. Their biggest fear is in alienation of their dealers and channel partners. However when one OEM develops a successful model the others who are smart will follow quickly.

The real value of Internet marketing isn't talking to customers, but listening to them, which is the basis of the "Toyota Plan" to establish a more direct channel to their clients.

Another key integration leading to a more effective online presence is that of customer relationship management (CRM) systems which will improve over the next few years. Look at how much they have improved in the last few years and there are more companies now in the game, quality companies producing quality solutions.

Pity the poor company signing a contract to be locked into a 5-year agreement today with one of these "archaic" legacy companies.

This type of marketing relationship, OEM-Consumer, aligns the desires and wants of consumers with the capabilities of the "OEM Company", and the success results in a loyal customer.

Korea is a classic example of this as they have 23 million Internet users, one of the highest percent based to the country's population in the world.

KAMA (Korean Automobile Manufacturers Association) is an active model of how Korean OEM's are using the Internet to reach their Korean customers. It may pay some of the US Dealers to research this. As we all know Korea is moving very quickly up the ladder.

Some automotive manufacturers have been in the forefront of this change, streamlining their supply chains via the dealers and establishing a trading exchange, Toyota, Ford, and General Motors, are able to better manage the entire order-to-delivery process and differentiate offerings to customers according to their value, some better than others.

Toyota and Ford were one of the first auto manufacturers to use the Internet to reach Hispanic customers with great success. Even today, 2007, you will find dealers in Hispanic communities without a Hispanic site as part of their ecommerce solution…. Go Figure? The Hispanic market continues to be the fastest-growing consumer segment in the U.S.

Some OEM's for the most part know this and strive to offset the lag and inefficiencies of the present system.

Via the Internet, more power has shifted to the customer, and those companies that are able to integrate their supply chain and their customer strategies via the Internet will achieve breakthrough performance.

To date this channel has been filtered through the dealer system so the data in many cases is skewered. As the OEM companies centralize their process and channel direct to the consumer they will receive back exactly what the consumers are looking for, the complaints, ideas, desires and suggestions, also the OEM will be able to give the consumer correct product information and eliminate much of the misinformation that is in the market place today.

That's definitely an interesting article to bring back. As I was reading it (and I skipped over how the article was written in 2000), I found myself vehemently disagreeing with some parts.

A few of the obvious parts left out of the arguments were laws and regulation around the sale of cars. I know that Ford has/tried a direct car model as did Carsdirect, but they both ended up being blocked by regulation.

Franchised dealers have better access to inventory and may always control certain sections of the market, but there will always be room for creative, independent dealers. Look at Carliquidators.com or Evenlevel.com.

Finally, obviously eBay Motors has managed to make a play as a dot com selling used cars, and I didn't see a single mention of them in the article. Certainly VC capital has dried up for web 1.0 companies that try to change distribution channels through the internet, but not for social sites that change interactions.

Great idea on the post Jeff...

Personally, I was not yet in this space 8 years ago but have done my best to catch up on the industry, trends, etc. I would have to agree that there will most likely come a day when there will not be a need for lead aggregators - although I am not sure that day is "just around the corner" just yet. For the management / ownership of maybe a few few thousand dealerships who have taken time to understand the Internet (SEM, auto specific search sites, online newspapers, blogging, etc) and leverage its power; there are thousands more who do not seem to care about understanding the Internet at all. Most seem to consider having visually appealing, flash heavy websites as "doing enough" on the Internet.

There seem to be plenty of tools, vendors, etc. to help dealerships break away from the need to buy leads. The problem is, in a lot of cases, no one at the dealership level really takes time to become educated on the Internet and how to best implement those tools(SEO, PPC, Blogging, RSS, etc.) at their dealership. Until more owners and GM's make this a priority, lead providers will most likely continue to find ways to add to their value proposition; which in quite a few cases still yields higher ROI than some traditional advertising methods.

There is no doubt that you need to watch out for the SEO/SEM companies that are more motivated by immediate income than immediate results. I think everyone will agree that if you receive positive, quantifiable results from any of your vendors, that the money you pay for their services becomes less of an issue.

I understand vendor issues as well as the next guy. I also have a unique take that many don't. I have been in the automotive industry for 22 years as a sales consultant, F&I Manager, Used Car Manager, New Car Manager, and General Sales Manager. I haven't seen it all, but I've seen quite a bit. The uniqueness comes into play in regards to SEO/SEM due to the fact that I am President of one such company, Elite Search Engine Marketing.

I am currently functioning in both roles. One as a General Sales Manager of the 12th ranked Mazda dealership in the nation, Kings Mazda, and also President of my SEO/SEM firm.

Being in the car business, I understand that it is all about results. I fight the negative perception everyday as a vendor. Much like the car business, where there are many dealers looking just to make the sale and not caring about a long term relationship, the same holds true in the SEO/SEM industry. We know that many of these companies will go by the wayside on an almost daily basis, but the damage they cause along the way is sometime irreversible.

My suggestion is to dig deeply into the SEO/SEM companies strategies. Have them spell everything out in writing. Get complete specifics in regards to their methods and philosophies. If you begin to get any type of push back to your questions, you then have your answer, they would not be the vendor to partner with.

If anyone would like additional advice, whether your looking for a new vendor or just want suggestions for your current one, I welcome your questions and feedback.

Remember, do your best possible investigative work up front. Firing a vendor isn't an enjoyable experience and it's also a negative reflection on you, if you were instrumental in making the hiring decision.

Dan

PPC is and will be an important part of my advertising budget for the forseeable future, and it is integral to the success of a website if properly used and administered. One not I have seen made yet is the management fee. One company I was using over a year ago would charge upwards of $500-600 on a $1200-1500 campaign. We would get results, but for that kind of money, I would do it!

I came across a new company in the arena, and have been using them since. Not because of just a low management fee ($150-200 on the same budget), but also because of the reporting tools they provide. The last company simply gave me a spreadsheet with keywords and rates, and showed me how quickly the budget ran out. Now, I can see when PPCs are used, which ones are most common, a mirror website with who's calling, etc.

Just like anything else, these dealers should get more than one perspective or quote when they are looking into SEM/SEO.

Geo targeted adwords also get triggered if you type in a locality in search... I think they call it query parsing... it likely has some wrong data... putting Newburgh, NY in CA.

Brandon- sorry for the late response... didn't see your question.

I don't get them when I query "cadillac" but I do get them for "newburgh cadillac". Maybe a geography issue between the two Orange Counties? Tunstin's in Orange County CA and I think Newburgh is an Orange County NY town. BTW they do also come up for "orange county cadillac".

Mitch,

I just realized you are very local to us. We are located in Rockland County, NY. If you search "cadillac" or "newburgh cadillac" from your NJ location is it coming up? It still is for me.

Mitch,

There is definetly an issue here beyond Google's inaccurate geo-targeting. I have had the geo-targeting inaccuracies in campaigns I have run as well. I did check my IP to ensure it was registered to NY which it was. I also tried the same search in 3 different states. New York, New Jersey & Pennsylvania as they are all close by to here and in my travels. In all of the states the ad showed on 3 different computers/networks with different IP's. For this reason I do not think this campaign is being regionally targeted on broad keywords such as cadillac. Of course something much more complicated could be happening here (this is Google after all) but it just seems like they are not using regional targeting.

Brandon, I have seen this happen several times over (even a dealer in South Carolina sharing my dealership name is a victim) and I think it's a bit one-sided to say that the campaign is being run incorrectly or maliciously. It's certainly possible, but there's another problem at hand which people here should be aware of.

There has been a ton of precedence set for the slight inaccuracy of Google's "geo-targeted" AdWords results... I've seen big-time SEM players like ReachLocal running campaigns that bumped into the issue you're stating, and ReachLocal's campaigns actually have algorithms to maximize top performing keywords. The likelihood of a cross-country dealer result in a local search being a top performing PPC keyword is slim to none, so in cases like these, we have to say that one of three things is occuring:

1. SEM Vendors are sneaking trash keywords into our campaigns to up the click-thrus, and they're lying about having automated programs that maximize top performing keywords (not happening... a couple extra clicks isn't worth the repercussions of fraud and false advertising)

2. The campaign simply isn't geo-targeted (any SEM vendor with half a brain knows how to geo-target so if the ad isn't running as such, it must be an amateur's work)

3. The all-powerful Google might be a bit off in its attempt to localize its paid search results (i.p. addresses ain't miracle workers... Google does a good job but you can't be perfect when you use i.p.'s as your gauge of location)

Having checked out your example though, it's really hard to tell what the issue is. There's obviously a lot of attention to search engine optimization on the site, yet the title of the page- the most important SEO element of them all- simply reads "tunstincadillac.com"... seems like an amateur effort, until you notice that the PPC campaigns have their own tracking codes which is not usually a tactic of an amateur.

Either way, I'd give Tunstin a ring if I were you...

Great point Jake. Integrity goes much further than the promise of a quick buck in my book.

Overseeing a Ford dealership receiving 'Ford Direct' leads, I was amazed at the lead/contact/appt/show/sold ratio. Didn't know at the time how or where Ford found these online shoppers, but the BDC was delivering these customers to the door all day long.

As a grean pea Internet Director, I kept getting these calls from a Dallas Cowboy fan with a classic Texas accent; 'Hi Jeff, Ruanne at Clickmotive here.' We talked more football than SEM... But it was a must as her boss and mine met at a 20 group meeting the prior spring.

Inbetween more Cowboys and Bears talk a year later and her educating me on SEM, she mentioned they were the SEM providers for the Ford Direct leads.

Honestly, I dont have the exact ratio results maninly because the CRM's reporting tool at the time was still under development, but between the BDC and myself we agreed that they were the most qualified leads coming in, with quality customer responses via email and phone.

My guesstimation; close to 70% of the incoming leads showed customer response.

I'm a tough sell and don't promote many company products unless I find them to be 100% quality. Not into gimmicks and promises; but would recommend Clickmotive for SEM all day long. Ask for Ruanne, knowledgeable and pleasant to converse with.

With content relevancy and RSS Marketing there is little need to go the PPC route on keywords and phrases that are consistent with your brands. You should reserve PPC for keywords and phrases not appearing on your sites, i.e. your competing brands.

For instance. a Cadillac dealer should use PPC to target people searching for Lincoln and Mercury. He should use content for his own terms.

With content relevancy and RSS Marketing there is little need to go the PPC route on keywords and phrases that are consistent with your brands. You should reserve PPC for keywords and phrases not appearing on your sites, i.e. your competing brands.

For instance. a Cadillac dealer should use PPC to target people searching for Lincoln and Mercury. He should use content for his own terms.

I have spoken with several companies about SEO and SEM and most all of the reps that I have spoken with have been stumped by at least one, if not all, of the questions that I asked. I have to try like hell to get money for every vendor that I use. I have come to the conclusion that there are hundreds maybe thousands of dealers out there with open checkbooks out there waiting for someone to sell them the "Magic Bean" of Internet Sales. Most of them have absolutely no clue what they are buying, and then are suprised when the get no return on it.

If that dealer is in fact paying an outside company to manage their PPC campaign, it's yet another example of how some companies take advantage of dealers who don't know any better. Some companies are purely interested in getting their share of the dealers money. The better companies have a genuine concern for the dealers success. In my opinion, integrity is much more important than a quick buck, and usually the money follows after a quality reputation is established anyway.

What an excellent blog, I've added your feed to my RSS reader.

People, please! "What can I do to earn your business?" is the "What do I have to do to put you in this car today?" of the new millinium. Set yourself apart! Build value in the product, build value in your dealership, build value in you and then, for goodness sakes GIVE THE GUY A PRICE! If the car is hot, why be afraid? If it's sticker, it's sticker! Defend it with Edmunds TMV, your own market research, prior sales numbers from your own dealership, etc. Know your customer, these are people that don't come in because they don't want the tradition process and time worn lexicon that goes along with it. They want honesty, sincerity, professionalism and, most of all, no BS. You can't treat them the same as the guy that pulls up outside in his 3 year old Caddy and starts looking at window stickers.

I like the Poster board idea.
Each customer is a little different. One thing that is the same is that most of them have heard the taught canned response by now.
Keep it simple and sincere, realize that some want a personal experience and some buy without any emotion. The key is to be able to make both your customers and that is not done by working with them in the same manner.

I agree with others... Build a relationship... Quote a price if that is what he wants... Why would you ever blow a customer off because he is shopping???? What do you think Internet Customers do?

If you look at the direction Internet sales is going, you will see that many websites that supply dealers with New Car Leads are now alowing the customer to choose several dealers.

Internet Sales Managers need to go back to the basics... call/email every lead... Build a relationship, sell themselves, and make sure the car the customer requested meets their needs!!!!!